In the Silence That Follows
by AWarriorsWounds
Summary: Fighting Walter was nothing compared to this.
1. Homecoming

**Oh my God I'm writing something serious for once**

**what**

**You see, parodies wear on me.**

Henry set his backpack near the door of Room 302, mindful of the bandages snaking from his elbow to his shoulder as he slid it from his arm. He did not close the door for fear of it not opening again, instead half-shutting it and gazing through the peephole into the hallway. He skated his fingertips across the painted surface, heterochromic eyes searching for the slightest trace of the words scrawled in blood or the scarlet trickle that once flowed down the door when his own image appeared, mumbling incoherently as it stared stupidly into space. He shuddered at the memory of his filthy mimic, recalling the 21121 etched into its- his- neck. He tilted his head back to scent the air like a predator for traces of the pervasive stench of death and decay that lingered when the shower and washing machine spewed blood all over their respective rooms. His attention flitted to the west wall, the one where holes resembling tar formed, a sort of orange lava dripping from it as a haunting appeared, moaning deeply, when Henry had been too slow in lighting the Holy Candle. Even now, he felt that dehibilitating migraine.

He sucked in a breath of air anxiously, one hand wrapping around the doorknob of the laundry room, half-expecting the hole to yawn before him, beckoning him to God-knows-where to witness someone die. Always witness someone die. The events that transpired before that were inconsequential, the various items he'd picked up in his journeys doing nothing but further embedding him in the twisted Otherworld. And the Otherworld seemed sentient, like it had a cynical sense of humor, allowing him to hold or gawk at some stranger on the verge of death or already dead, as if reminding him, _It'll be you soon. It'll be you soon. Run all you want, but he will catch you. Hide all you want, but he will find you._

As he flung the door open, there was no hole, thankfully. He sighed and shook his head, stalking towards the dresser. It was still displaced from when he'd moved it to find the pistol and a line of sight to Eileen's bedroom, and there was that hole. He gasped and backed up like a startled animal, careless of his wounded thigh. He grunted and doubled over as the bandaged gash, the product of a well-aimed hit from the hatchet of a nurse monster, sent a jolt of distress through every nerve in his body. He clutched it for a while, now painfully aware of the countless stitches, probably numbering into the hundreds, crisscrossing his limbs and torso. He was more gauze and thread than human, his hands, neck, chest, abdomen, and legs enveloped in white layers. Bruises darkened his face, and the experience had left him emaciated and gaunt. He was sure that through all of those antibiotic washes and baths in the hospital, he still reeked strongly of rot. It would never go away, he was sure.

He touched the makeshift peephole to find it was only superficial, as if a wayward piece of furniture had just begun to chip away at the wall. When he bent down to look through it, he saw nothing of Room 301, and that came as a relief. He dismissed it as a residual effect, its origins not entirely based in the phantasmagoria of the Otherworld, so therefore it would remain when the portals and hauntings dissipated.

Henry, comforted sufficiently, moved on to his storage box where he stockpiled his weapons. He'd not feel safe again without a cache like that in any place of residence.

The old wooden box's rusty hinges shrieked as they were pulled open, its top lifting to reveal- emptiness.

Not complete emptiness, no, as a few stray health drinks, first-aid kits and Holy Candles remained where he had last left them, but they did not matter to Henry anymore. Where was his aluminum bat? His ax? His pistol and his revolver, and their ammunition?

_Damn you to hell, Frank, _he inwardly cursed the aged superintendent. Henry was certain that bag of bones had come in or ordered a crew in to tidy up in his absence, and on the orders of the hospital, confiscated all tools he could potentially harm himself with. Now what was he supposed to use to defend himself? That worthless boxcutter, or a kitchen knife? Come to think of it, those were likely gone, too. If the hospital didn't trust him with objects sharper than a spoon, why had they released him unsupervised with Oxycontin, operating on a trust system that he wouldn't overdose or simply go to any local store, buy a plain knife, and open the blue veins of his wrists in a warm bath.

Consumed with spite and anger, he continued down the back hallway, taking a right into the bathroom, another site of a portal and a shower that sprayed blood everywhere. The wall where the hole once opened and was subsequently closed by a large block of stone was unscathed, with no trace of any damage. He'd come to accept that.

He knelt on the cold tile, the bruises and cuts on his knees forgotten with the urge to inspect the bathtub. Meticulously scrubbed to a showroom sparkle, the blood was completely gone, and a new shower curtain still bore the pungent smell of chemicals. Just as he was about to stand, he noted a greasy red speck.

It was hardly anything, not a centimeter in diameter. In any other situation, it would have been passed over, and if seen, treated as a splotch from a simple cut he'd received shaving. But not now. Not all the bleach in the world could wash out the significance of this tiny, tiny speck, a confirmation that his experience in Silent Hill was real and that he was not insane. Silent Hill and the Otherworld was not a ridiculous fantasy conjured to suppress the memory of a brutal attack by a would-be murderer in a parking garage or something similar, as Henry had hoped was the case as he sat awake in his hospital bed long after the lights had been turned off.

Henry had always considered himself to be a stoic man. He always felt awkward when he expressed feelings, as if he was a stage actor, and a terrible one at that, emoting for an audience. It was against his nature to show more than vague happiness, dull surprise, and muted grief. But not here. Not now.

He broke down, and cried like he was a grade schooler again, alone in the silence of an apartment that he could no longer call home.

**I am currently debating whether to continue this (I already have more chapters planned) or just leave it as is, because it could really go either way. Feedback would be appreciated. :)**


	2. A Visit

**So, as you can see, I decided to make this a multi-chapter fic. It'll probably be around three to five chapters long.**

Henry nervously wrung the worn handle of his rusty ax**, **twisting his weapon of choice in his hands. He was somewhere in the Forest World again, creeping through trees like a wanted fugitive to avoid that _man. _Never in his wildest dreams did he think his life would come to this: five weapons stored in the waistband of his pants, surviving only on the dropped bottles of a thick brown liquid known as nutrition drinks, and beating monsters as he tried to avoid the murderer who wielded two pistols and never seemed to take any damage, despite being shot, hacked, and beaten.

Eileen limped about a meter behind him, puffing heavily. In spite of her broken arm, bruises, and gashes, given to her by the murderer, and wearing high heels and a party dress, she never lost her determined spark, clutching a riding crop and just daring a monstrous dog to use her as a chew toy.

"This is a nightmare... this can't be happening." Her high, feminine voice was foreign in the ominous quiet. Henry had no words of comfort for her, and what he had said before was hollow and of no comfort at all.

"We just need to get to Wish House and we'll be safe, okay?" He paused to let her rest and placed a hand on her shoulder. "We're close. See where we are?" He beckoned to the Mother stone, that large rock he'd rather not look at.

She wrapped her arms around him in a loose hug, a tear sliding down her cheek. "How many more?"

Assuming she meant how many more gates, he replied, "One or two." He tried as hard as he could to sound optimistic.

"No," she whimpered. "How many more worlds?"

Henry counted all the portals he'd walked through after he watched Jasper Gein die. "Just two or three..."

"Just," she laughed bitterly. "None would be better!"

"Yes, it would," he agreed, "but the truth is, we're stuck here. And no amount of wishing and praying is going to change that. If we want freedom, we'll have to fight for it. The only way out is through more worlds, more monsters, and more of that bastard that keeps attacking us." He searched frantically for any sign of dirty blond hair or a bloodstained trench coat.

Henry brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes hesitantly, murmuring, "We'll get out of here, and not in two pine caskets, alright? We're the only ones left to protect the apartment from that guy."

The subtle appeal to Eileen's altruistic nature hardened her resolve. She nodded firmly, stating, "Alright." She swung the gate wide, a small smile on her lips. "After you. You have the ax."

The moment he stepped through, he heard a mocking chuckle and the click of a gun cocking. Eileen screamed, ducking behind a tree as Henry dropped his ax and fumbling for his revolver.

Just as he found the grip of the gun, a bullet burned through his left shoulder. He groaned in agony as blood darkened the sleeve of his shirt. The revolver fell to the leaves, and then the man approached at a run.

"Dammit, no!" Eileen roared, flinging herself on the murderer in a barrage of blows from the riding crop. He staggered but did not fall, a series of _cracks _resounding in the night air.

Another gunshot sent a bullet straight through Henry's brain, and his eyes rolled back into his head as he fell to the ground, limp as a ragdoll.

"Henry. Henry!" The voice was foggy in his ears, and his eyelids snapped open. He stared wildly around the room to see Eileen shaking him softly. He felt about the surface on which he laid, finding tangled sheets damp with cold sweat instead of the wet ground and slick leaves he expected.

_All a nightmare, _he told himself, exhaling shakily and burying his head in his palms. He was in his bedroom. Walter was dead. Henry had survived. He was safe. But that nightmare...

"I'm terribly sorry. I walked by and noticed your door was open, and I figured I'd check on you. You seemed to be having a nightmare, so I woke you up. Like I said, I'm really sorry," Eileen apologized.

"No, it's fine. And thanks." He removed his hands frorm his face to gaze at her. She backed up from his bedside to allow him to stand, where he pulled on a plain T-shirt over his bare chest, wincing as it roughly dragged over the claw marks and bites decorating his spine.

"Have anything planned for today?" she questioned, this bubbly side of her something he hadn't seen in Silent Hill.

"No. I was going to hang out around here," he groaned, lumbering after her into the living room. He turned into the kitchen, opening the overhead cupboards and pulling out two glasses. "Want anything to drink? Hungry? I haven't been grocery shopping, but I've got a few old bags of chips and stuff."

"Nah," Eileen turned down his offer, sitting down on the sofa, stretching out her legs and folding her hands over her stomach to watch him. "I'll have a glass of water."

Henry filled up the two glasses, taking a sip from his own cup and handing Eileen hers. She accepted it, then left it abandoned in her clutch.

"Your cast is gone," he observed.

"Yeah." Eileen grinned, twisting her arm in the air to scrutinize it. Henry became aware of the multiple scars puckering her pale flesh, one the size of a pencil zigzagging through her clavicles, another the size of a nickel flat and glossy on her bicep, a bullet wound. Pink marks, not yet scars, formed the shape of a dog's mouth on her forearm. And on her forehead, above her right eye, a reddish line curved. "We're regular heroes now, Henry."

"Hmm?" He had become inadvertantly distracted.

"I said, we're regular heroes now. The local news wants to know our entire story. We even made it to the _Today _show! 'Henry Townshend and Eileen Galvin, two neighbors in a South Ashfield apartment building, were kidnapped to fulfill a strange cult ritual, where they fought for their lives against a murderer in the forest of the nearby resort town of Silent Hill- and won,'" she joyously reiterated what the news anchor had said of their experience.

"They forgot to mention the portals, the monsters, and just about everything of real importance," Henry chuckled, though he recalled with a shudder the portals, the monsters, and everything of real importance.

"Well, when you consider it-" Eileen took a gulp from her water- "the only ones who could believe us are dead or in a mental hospital."

"True." Henry finished his water, setting the cup on the coffee table without a coaster, one of his major pet peeves long before Silent Hill. Now, those small things didn't matter.

"So, when are you going back?" Eileen pointed out his wraps and stitches.

"They gave me instructions on how to do it myself," he responded. "I'm looking forward to removing them myself." He was honestly indifferent to the prospect of pulling out the threads, as the wounds had to hurt more being created than having something pulled out of them.

"Ah." Eileen set down her cup as well. "You know, a plastic surgeon is donating free scar revision surgery if we want it."

"Yeah, I heard." Henry shook his head in dissent. "I'm not going to take it."

"Same. In a way, I kind of like my 20121 scar. I can't get rid of it, and if people have a problem with that, they can go to hell. I rescued South Ashfield Heights- with you, of course- so I think I've earned these."

Henry just laughed.

"And Henry, thank you." She righted herself to touch his bandaged wrist.

"For what?"

"Coming to my aid in all those worlds; you didn't have to, but you did. I was probably a greater hindrance than help to you, in my state at that time."

He stiffened abruptly. "It was nothing."

"Come on, now's not the time to be humble. It was something. It was everything." She grasped lightly so she didn't hurt him. "Without you, I wouldn't be here. Even when you left me, you always returned. So thanks."

"No need to thank me," he muttered tersely, standing sharply and taking his glass.

"Henry..." He dumped it into the sink, chipping the rim, and he slammed his hand against the counter. Eileen jumped at his sudden outburst; she never in a million years would expect the soft-spoken hermit to have a violent streak.

"I don't want to talk about it!" he yelled.

"Henry, we can't pretend that it never happened. Obviously, we have things wrong with us, things we'll likely need therapy for. If you won't talk about it, you'll never get better," Eileen reasoned, raising her hands in surrender.

Henry sank onto a stool, massaging his temples. "I'm not getting therapy."

"I'm in therapy, Henry. It's not as bad as you think it is."

"I'm not going to be treated like some psychopath like everyone else!" His brain then caught up with what he had said, realizing the new hurt expression on Eileen's face. "Eileen..."

She shot to her feet and stomped past him. "Goodbye, Henry. I know you wouldn't want to talk to a psychopath like me."

"Why are you making such a big deal of this? I said I'm sorry," he cried after her.

She stopped and gazed at him from the doorway. "Whether you want to admit it or not, you have what I do. So does that make me a psycopath or normal?"

"I really wish we could be normal," he mumbled.

"We're normal. Just a different kind of normal." And the door closed with a click. Again, Henry was alone.


	3. Remodeling

**Woohoo! Chapter 3 of WCA! We're cookin' with gas now!**

**AWW does not own Silent Hill or Konami... sadly.**

** - That's exactly what I think. Poor Henry is so underappreciated, and The Room is, in my opinion, one of the most hated in the series. It's a good game, though not nearly as excellent as SH:2 (but then again, what game is?), and most certainly does not deserve the treatment it's being given. And heck yes, I ship 20x21 like I'm FedEx. I don't think I'll shoehorn my ship too much into here- I'll hint at it throughout, however.**

Henry cursed his own stupidity. _Dammit, _one of his only friends and few supporters and he'd called her a nutcase for confessing she needed a help. He'd effectively driven her away when all she wanted to do was assist him by hitting below the belt like a defensive coward, and that was all he was.

_Why are you so adamantly against therapy? _he asked himself, resting his head against the arm of the sofa. _It doesn't mean you're weak._

_I don't want to be treated like the victim, _one part of his brain argued.

_But you _are!

He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, no longer moderating the internal debate. Anything that crossed his mind interrupted it, such as Eileen struggling to hold back tears, his own callousness, and the reliving of their experience in Silent Hill.

He opened his eyes again to see anew the pictures that hung mockingly on the plain white walls and were propped up on desks throughout the apartment, all ones of him or taken by him. Relics of a bygone age. Someone else's life, seen through the lens of a camera. It was no longer his life that was framed plainly in glass and stained wood, more like the inherited momentos of a dead man. He gently ran his thumb over the smooth surface of his graduation picture, where he was a young man seven years ago, proudly displaying his high school diploma, a half-smile on his hollow face. The picture next to it was one of him as a grade schooler, shyly grinning at the parent who held the camera on a field trip. Looking over the two now, he found it hard to believe he was once that age. It felt like an eon ago, like his entire life was wasted in the strange worlds he traversed. Had he really been out of this apartment, once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away? When was it decided he was the Receiver?

He understood that if he had chosen a different room, he never would have been roped into the disturbing inner sanctum of Silent Hill and its cults. Some other poor guy- and there had been one, one quite interested in the same room, which was the reason Henry had to hastily make a deal on the apartment- would have roamed the worlds, fought Walter, and possibly died. In a rare show of selfishness, he thought that this scenario was the one he preferred. After all, numbness was the path to survival. Eileen Galvin would be nothing more than a stranger, one he'd feel sorry for when he heard of her murder then promptly forget within a month. When he recalled hugging her, comforting her in the eerie quiet of the yard of the Wish House when she thought for sure he'd been killed by Walter, he instantly hated himself a little more.

_She'd have been fine on her own, _he justified.

"But the truth is, we're stuck here, and no amount of wishing or praying is ever going to change that," he reiterated to his photo. He couldn't alter the past, no matter how he had been cheated by life. Albeit, that didn't mean he wouldn't try.

Almost absentmindedly, he balanced the picture for a split second on his palm, then in one sweeping arc, he flung it to the north side of his room. It collided with the tabletop lamp there, tumbling it with a cacophony of breaking glass and the thud of a heavy object falling.

_You're not me! _he yelled inwardly at the pictures that had as of yet escaped his wrath. He leaped up from the couch, desperate to cleanse Room 302 of any trace of his identity. Without concern for the wall, he savagely tore the image of Toluca Lake's picturesque shore on a misty morning from the hook with a strangled roar of anger. He exercised more self-control now, opting to throw it onto the blue carpeted floor, where a flower of milky white cracks blossomed in the glass, blotting out the water.

More photos piled upon the original, his personal photographs treated with exceptional hatred. A year-old profile and the one of him as a child were hurled at the same spot as his graduation image, creating a sizeable crater in the plaster, adding to the glimmering, tiny shards of broken glass peppering the ground. Somehow, the sun shone brightly through his window, uncaring of Henry's predicament.

He stomped through the living room, resisting the urge to flip his coffee table, down the hallway and turning sharply into his bedroom. His gaze scoured over every detail of this room as if he was a predator, searching for a new bit of prey.

There. The desk. The air grew thick, the mood menacing as he glowered at the unobtrusive furniture in the corner, despite the other three pictures in the room, but he would deal with them later.

He shoved the swivel chair aside roughly, setting to work feverishly clawing at the three small frames until they fell to the desktop. Those were more of a stop on the way to his actual destination- what was in the drawers.

Henry tore them out, scattering the contents onto the bed and dashing them to the floor when all the envelopes and squares of glossy paper were emptied. The drawers buckled as they hit the floor, sending out a last puff of dust as their plywood boards parted. Six drawers. That had to be one-hundred unbound pictures, not to mention the seven thick picture books, in each drawer. Over six hundred pictures. Possibly over one thousand.

_What events were that interesting in your mundanity, Henry, to take up so much of your space? _Like the leering Cheshire cat teasing Alice, he stoked the fires of his irrational rage. _Your entire existence has been hand-to-mouth, flipping from bill to bill. So what if you liked that meaningless job? You could never afford more than Room 302._

He couldn't yet touch the desktop and, in one sweeping motion, clear off its contents, as below the lamp was his scrapbook. The sight of its weathered navy exterior gave him pause, as he knew that inside was the documentation of Silent Hill through the words of other people, like Jasper Gein and Joseph Schreiber, even Walter Sullivan himself. All lost souls, those who saw the horror of true evil and did not escape undamaged.

He pondered what he really wanted to do- just moments earlier, he'd been gutting his apartment of almost all semblances of his formerly normal life, so why would he stop at records of his personal hell?

_Just once, _he reasoned, reaching to the cover. _I have to know._

The corner indented the pad of his thumb by a centimeter as he lifted it cautiously, its blunt edge searing like a heated knife on his finger. He squinted, almost dumbfounded, then jerking the corner up.

The cover landed with a muted _clack _on the desk, exposing a repulsive, living mass.

_Maggots._

Their fat, slimy bodies writhed in the pages' remains, engorging themselves on the congealed, rancid blood coating the paper. He gagged into his hand at the stench, tear ducts set afire, unable to focus his attention on something more pleasant, even as his stomach rolled in protest and bile climbed threateningly in his throat. He backed up, and when the backs of his knees hit the foot of the bed, he collapsed gratefully onto its rumpled sheets. He wheezed, sickened, watching as a single trickle of fresh blood seeped onto the desk. Then another. Then another.

The rivulets combined on the desk into a slick puddle, expanding rapidly, sending over the cliff a red waterfall onto the carpet. Its greasy touch leeched into the papers and neatly organized writing utensils, and he was reduced to staring, shocked into indifference.

All those maps, Crimson Tomes, and notes were lost forever. The proof of them was erased, and maybe they never were truly there in the first place. They were, after all, from a separate reality. In that case, how were his weapons and other paraphernalia real? Were they just objects caught up in the Otherworld, like Henry, like good people in a war-torn country?

He laid back on the bed, relieved to feel the rapidfire chop of the ceiling fan as it whirred, the cool air chilling the perspiration on his forehead. He panted the scent of his own skin, resisting the tightening in his esophagus, clamping his jaws shut until it ached. His brain refused to allow the vision of the maggots to be scoured away, and through his fingers, he still smelled the rank, nauseating fluids.

When he was sure he was in no danger of retching, he stood wearily and staggered through the doorway, gratefully sucking in the clean oxygen as he entered the living room. Unmindful of the mess on his floor, he stumbled right over it, a character lost in a daze as he sat himself on the couch again, painfully aware of Eileen's half-empty water glass.

He noted with derision his cell phone, a light blinking to signify missed calls. He'd get to those later... if at all.

As the scent of blood began to flood down the hall, all he wanted to do anymore was sleep, slip into a dreamless rest and forget for an hour or two the troubles that would never cease to plague him.

oOoOoOo

Eileen settled into the pillows of her bed, a book lofted above her head as she tried to read, a simple task turned impossible by the words jumbling together nonsensically. Her mind was in another place, and the fantastical description of a fairytale land could not capture her attention. She gnawed her thumbnail anxiously, a terrible habit reflected in the jagged edges of her nails.

Against the ribbed fabric of her favorite pink tanktop, dead skin forming one number in the gap between her shoulder blades was tickled annoyingly, still raw, with parts of it scabbed.

She finally accepted the fact that she would not be able to read much today and shoved her bookmark into the pages, shutting the book and placing it on her nightstand.

She turned over in bed and reached out to open her closet, greeted by a black garbage bag. She involuntarily shuddered, the contents of that bag all too familiar. Upon her return from the hospital, she'd found her cheery pink rabbit doll soaked in her blood and grinning a little more menacingly. She hadn't gotten around to throwing it out, so there it sat.

Her view trailed to the full-length mirror, where she observed the black circles beneath her formerly bright green eyes. They lacked their characteristic warmth, gaining a suspicious and mistrustful glint. Her lips were curved downwards in a permanent frown, amd her hair hung in lank shoulder-length tendrils. Another thing she hadn't gotten around to doing- cutting her hair. How could she live this way? Would she 'not get around to' eating and drinking and simply permit herself to wither away?

_Crash!_

Her head jerked around instinctively, and she reached for the nearest possible weapon on impulse- an aluminum baseball bat, bought for self-defense purposes. Some would underestimate its defensive capabilities, but she had seen its power as it dented the skull of a grotesquely oversized nurse, and besides, she didn't want to go through all the hassle of getting approved to buy a gun. She likely wouldn't be approved, too- were permits distributed to therapy patients? Maybe, but they most certainly weren't given to patients who had been on suicide watch, something not even Henry knew.

She searched for the source of the noise, keeping her back against the wall to prevent a sneak attack, half-anticipating a dirty-haired man in a trench coat to approach her, grinning as he pinned her against a wall and cut the tendon in the crook of her knee to prevent her from escaping.

A similar noise resounded from the neighboring apartment, Room 302. She dropped the baseball bat, heart thudding, and listened.

A series of thumps gave her a picture of what was going on: Henry was tearing down the pictures in his room. He cursed once, loudly, then his footsteps faded as he retreated to the bedroom. Not ten seconds later, fainter thumps sounded. Then they stopped.

Eileen tangled her fingers in her hair and paced for a minute, waiting for any indication of life. She introduced her forehead to the wallpaper, face contorting in distress.

She wasn't sure how long she stayed in that position, just harkening the activities of the distressed resident of Room 302, but she was sure she had never felt so helpless in her life.

**Funny story, I was playing music as I was writing this. Just as I began to write Henry ripping the pictures of the walls, 'Yakety Sax' started to play. I enjoyed that a lot more than I should've.**

**Until next time, reviewers!**


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